Caged
by TinaBanina96
Summary: They are trapped, two birds in a gilded cage of their own making. Opium War Era.


**Title:** Caged**  
****Author: **TCNinja96**  
****Summary:** They are trapped, two birds in a gilded cage of their own making.

* * *

**AN:** **This is set sometime in the first Opium War. To be honest, this plot bunny has been sitting there forever just begging me to write it and I had a really weird time writing this. England and China is actually one of my favourite ships.**

**DISCLAIMER: ****I do not own Hetalia**

* * *

**Caged**

In moments like this, he dreams.

Sometimes the dream leads him right back. Back to a time he can barely remember, when he was young and free, with the world laid out before him _(for him)_ and him alone.

He misses that time when his spirit seemed so safe, sailing the seas and soaring above his home, and the homes of others. Everything had been so different... had it not?

He tries to remember, but the dream is hard to recall, and often he thinks the dream is just that - a dream.

Even the oldest nations forget.

Old. He is so, so old.

He feels his age, recognises that he is isolated _(like a certain island which he will never be never ever forgive) _kneeling before this Western Nation.

The man with such unnaturally bright hair, and poison green eyes looks down on him with something other than love, something that yet isn't quite hate.

It scares him, but he will not back down.

Freedom comes at a price, and he is willing to pay anything.

* * *

_You used to be so big..._

He's not sure why the words haunt him so. Why that broken voice replays itself over, and over, and over again until he starts to scream for it to just shut up and go way.

It never goes away, but he is the god damn British Empire and he swears that one day...

He banishes those stupid, lying words and relishes the temporary silence. He can't dwell on the past. It is the future that matters, the future and the power that it brings to him.

History be damned.

Nothing good comes of the past. There is nothing he wants to remember.

All there is, is the present, the taste of a victory honey-sweet on his tongue, the rush of a winning a shot of adrenalin to his heart. This is not the high of any drug, but something much stronger.

So he smiles at the nation before him and whispers soothing nothings, the meaning of which he is not even sure.

* * *

_The western nation's voice is heavy with faux-calm, and he almost shudders._

_The man is mad. Utterly mad._

"_It won't hurt... it's what's best for our people."_

_He is not some child, easily swayed by candy-coated promises. He is a nation proud, a great kingdom._

_The smoke from the pipe the Englishman brought with him clouds the room, and everything is in a dense fog that claws at his throat and eyes._

_It does its best to cloud his mind, but he will not cave._

"_We need each other you know."_

"_You need me."_

_The Western world has an obsession, a craving for the things of his own country. Silks... porcelain... tea..._

_But they have nothing in return._

* * *

_He will not be denied._

"_You're being ridiculous."_

_Who does this nation think he is? He is nothing... nothing compared to his own Empire._

_The sun never sets and all that._

"_I know when I am correct, Ying Guo."_

_And with that he finds something inside him boils over, and anger (is it even anger at all?) floods him and the words, those lying words come back._

You used to be so big...

_He still is. He still is._

You used to be so big...

_He cannot be challenged. He will not be challenged._

* * *

_He senses a change in the Englishman's demeanour, and grips his own robes a little tighter, clutching the soft silk tightly between the fingers of hands that refuse to trembl._

"_You should leave. You have nothing that can buy my people, or my country."_

"_You will regret this."_

_The nation's green eyes are narrowed as he storms out._

_He relaxes the grip on his clothing and sighs._

_A storm is coming, one he has fought for a long time._

_He fears that this time, words will not be enough._

* * *

"I told you that you would regret it."

He puts the hard edge in his voice deliberately, mockingly.

He's won! He's won!

The land is practically his to control, and it feels _glorious. _He looks down at the Eastern nation… so… _broken_. The power of the poppies… he knew he would find a way, and he has.

_You used to be so big…_

Yet still those cursed words won't go away, but now he can argue back.

China… China is defeated.

* * *

He doesn't want to think about how it came to this. How everything spiralled out of control so quickly, and slowly, breath by breath, his people were hooked.

The smoke of the opium (_he is a slave a slave to this and he craves it even now but he knows he shouldn't but but but…) _is a dense blanket, smothering his thoughts.

It's getting harder to fight it, but he must.

"Why did you do this?" he chokes out the words, and that disgusting, addictive smog fills his lungs, numbing him, forcing his eyelids to droop.

"You said I had nothing to give you."

And the Englishman laughs, a terrifying, utterly insane sound that sends an icy splinter of fear into his heart.

"You were wrong… you were so, so wrong."

"Please… _Ying Guo_… England."

And he stops laughing all of a sudden, and the quiet is strange.

* * *

"Please… _Ying Guo_… England."

The voice, a slurred melody, floats up towards him and he stops. If only to listen for a moment, listen to that strange tongue, the twisted inflections that betray how _foreign, _how _new_...

He lets his gaze drop to the nation, on bent knees at his feet. Brown eyes... no, _golden_ eyes once so defiant, are glazed over now. His own eyes drift down the nation's body.

Hair, so fine like that silk created by his so-called Middle Kingdom, spills, black ink against the parchment paleness of his skin. A delicate face, a little too feminine perhaps.

So fragile. So pure.

All of a sudden he feels the need to reach out and touch him. He has to mar the perfect skin, to leave long red marks along it and ruin the porcelain likeness. The urge comes from somewhere deep, buried beneath memories of something a little happier, less dark.

_You used to be so big..._

He reaches out and runs his fingers through that ridiculously smooth hair, and almost laughs again and how _easy _it is, how _wonderful _he feels.

* * *

He stops fighting. It is too hard, simply too hard.

He gives in to the fumes.

* * *

He _is _the British Empire... and he is drunk on power.

He gives in to the rush.

* * *

_They are trapped, two birds in a gilded cage of their own making._

_Neither can live without the other, yet like this, neither will survive._

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**I have no idea what I just wrote. None at all. Review?  
Edited 7/12/2012**


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